Leapfrogging your first group of pets to 25
Notes: This guide is intended for players who are new or fairly new to pet battling and do not have any pets at level 25 yet. If you have pets at 25, look for the Power-leveling Strategies guide.

Reminder: You can purchase, trade, adopt or win cageable pets of any level, but can only learn those that are equal to or lower than the highest level pet in your collection. So, if your highest level pet is level 10, you can only add pets to your collection that are level 10 or lower. Even if you don't plan on buying pets, you need higher level ones to battle tamers.

In the course of one weekend, I went from zero to several level 25s by leveraging family strengths. I was able to add a boosted level 25 pet to my collection and start power-leveling and fighting the more difficult tamers around Azeroth.

When I first started toying with the idea of battling and collecting wild pets, I was content to stay in low-level zones and just get more low-level pets, possibly increasing my max level by one. I figured I’d eventually work my way up. Then a friend kindly boosted one of my cageable pets to 25, and I was stuck! I couldn’t learn it and, if I continued on my current path, it would be a loooooong time before I’d be able to. I went hunting for a solution so I could have my Ghostly Skull back! It might seem complicated, but it seemed to go by really fast for me. Bonus: I got a lot of companion wild pets along the way, which grew my collection nicely. It was what really got me started collecting wilds. Once I had one level 25 pet, I was able to relearn my pet, and was hooked!

Prep Work

The WarcraftPets' Weak/Strong Cheatsheet is very helpful. I keep a printed copy next to my computer and refer to it often.

To get through to the final stage of this strategy, you'll need a character that can get to and around Pandaria safely (requires a minimum of level 85 + Pandaria flying).

Recommended add-on: Battle Pet BreedID. At the time of this revision, too many mods are conflicting with the pre-Legion patch changes. I’ll update when I find some working.

Movin' Right Along

Level as many Mechanical pets to 10 as you can. You can get started with three level 10s, or lower-leveled pets, but if you have, say, six all at least level 10, you can do another battle while you wait for your heal to come off cooldown.

Low-level Wild Mechanicals. Get the highest quality possible. Collecting wild pets allows you to get up to three of each with no expense, but you can also adopt or buy crafted or vendored Mechanicals.

Low-level Elementals for Mechanicals to fight
Mechanicals are good against Elementals and can battle those that are at least a level or so higher for increased XP (of course, their companions must be taken into account).

Mechanicals v. Magic: Got your handful of Mechanicals leveled up a bit? Excellent. Now, head to the grounds of Karazhan in Deadwind Pass. In the area, find and battle Arcane Eyes. These magical pets are weak against Mechanicals, and, more importantly, do not have companions. Your team(s) of three lower-level Mechanicals can handle one eye at a time! There is only one breed (P/S) so just focus on capturing Uncommons or Rares (if you get lucky). This can take a little while, depending on the number of eyes around (it was, easily, the longest part of my journey). You might as well keep going until you have captured three. (You can always release one or two later.) I captured the first two, regardless of quality, and replaced them as I encountered better ones, ending up with one rare and two uncommons (and a Restless Shadeling).

Magic v. Flying. All right. Have your three Arcane Eyes? Put on a jacket and head for Northrend! In the area around Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight, you will find Dragonbone Hatchlings, which are (wait for it) weak to magic. Bonus: there is a stable master at the temple. This isn't as easy as the previous step, because you have to contend with the birds' companions, but it shouldn't take a terribly long time to capture three good quality birds here (and nab some of their rare companions if any come along. Why not?) You are SO close now, with some level 20-ish pets!

Flying v. Aquatic. Now, get to Pandaria. Port or fly to one of the shrines and fly over to Mistfall Village (Nik Nik is the stable master. Note: he may be phased if you haven't quested in the area). This area is chock-full of aquatics which are - you guessed it - weak against flyers. At least one of your flyers should survive each battle, and will get nice chunks of XP. Most of the time, the first opponent's first attack is a heal, which your first slot pet can easily survive. Fill all three slots with your highest level flyers and go!

Remember that when you capture a wild pet, it drops a couple of levels, so you only need to worry about capturing rares for your collection (and they’re hard to level against the same type). You need to get your flyers experience. It will take a few battles, because now both sides are close to the same level, but in a little while, one of yours will ding 25 and you will have your first level 25 pet!

If you like, you can stay right in this spot and start power-leveling a few more. There are some excellent tamer-based strategies for leveling, but you may need a bigger selection of higher level pets to get started there. This is a great place to level a bunch!

That last bullet point, there's a stray bracket after the power-leveling link, and a lonely close-list tag at the end. But I'm delighted to see this, as I've seen people say before they just didn't know how to start, and I honestly didn't know where to point them.

solitha wrote:That last bullet point, there's a stray bracket after the power-leveling link, and a lonely close-list tag at the end. But I'm delighted to see this, as I've seen people say before they just didn't know how to start, and I honestly didn't know where to point them.